Baby number two is well on the way!  She’s due in early May and is predicted to be born exactly two years to the day from James’ birthday on 2nd May 2008.  I found this amusing set of images to help us all understand how to look after babies in the best possible way.  It’s not the most educational guide on baby care,  but it covers the bleeding obvious, which is always a good place to start.

As Spike Milligan said, “education isn’t everything….for example, it isn’t an elephant….”

Tongue firmly in cheek, are you sitting comfortably?  Let’s begin….

 You can get the rest of the book from here:

http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Baby-Handling-Tips-David/dp/0762424915

Babies are now safer everywhere!  I’ve certainly learnt a thing or two.

Unbelievable!

I suppose he just pipped Alan Greenspan to the post.

Here are some quotes from the person of the year proving what a wise genius this man really is:

July 2005

“I think what is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilize, might slow consumption spending a bit.”

November 2005

”With respect to their safety, derivatives, for the most part, are traded among very sophisticated financial institutions and individuals who have considerable incentive to understand them and to use them properly.””The Federal Reserve’s responsibility is to make sure that the institutions it regulates have good systems and good procedures for ensuring that their derivatives portfolios are well managed and do not create excessive risk in their institutions.”

January 2006

”Our expectation is that the decline in activity or the slowing in activity will be moderate, that house prices will probably continue to rise.”

March 2007

“At this juncture . . . the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime markets seems likely to be contained,” 

May 2007

“While rising delinquencies and foreclosures will continue to weigh heavily on the housing market this year, it will not cripple the U.S.”

October 2007

“It is not the responsibility of the Federal Reserve - nor would it be appropriate - to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their financial decisions.”

February 2008

”I expect there will be some failures of smaller banks.”

Mar 18th 2008 - Bear Stearns bailout is announced

On Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae:”…adequately capitalized” …. ”in no danger of failing.”

Sept 8th 2008 - Fannie and Freddie are nationalised.

September 16th, 2008 - $85 Billion A.I.G. bailout.

September 19th, 2008 - $700 Billion bailout plan announced.

You can read more about his economic achievements (to perhaps balance my view) in Time Magazine here:

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,1946375,00.html

I’m in the south of Japan on the island of Kyushu, I live very close to the city of Fukuoka or Hakata as it is sometimes known, and it’s a great city for me in terms of size and location.  Perched on the north west tip of the island of Kyushu it has good connections with an international airport, ferry terminals and the shinkansen.  This makes it the ideal departure point to head north to Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Kobe and the general Kansai district, and further on to Tokyo if required.  It also makes a great departure point for exploring the island of Kyushu. 

As you drive south from Fukuoka, there are beautiful mountain ranges, which for the majority of the year are covered with a lush, green, impenetrably dense forest of bamboo, firs, maple and cedar trees, amongst others.  Even in winter the mountains are not bare for long and in the autumn their colours are spectacular.  There are volcanoes and consequently many hot springs (onsen) to visit, and lots of rivers and waterfalls dotted about around the landscape. 

For the most part, mountains, too steep to climb, live, or farm on, take up the entire landscape.  The roads pass directly through the mountains in tunnels and across bridges that I can only think, must have been a nightmare to engineer.  Occasionally though, where the valleys flatten out into plateaux, you find small rural farming communities, on the bigger plains towns and cities have sprung up, especially those based around the onsen tourism industry or near the coast.  

Some towns such as Yufuin in Oita prefecture have expensive, rustic, classically styled old lodgings and you can tell that value is placed on a towns rural charms and see the effort made to preserve this air of authenticity and wholesome living, in sharp contrast to the concrete sprawl and neon of the cities.

It’s a shame that so many young people have left the traditional life in the countryside to seek their fortunes in the cities, but this is undoubtedly the case.  Rural areas seem to be mostly populated by elderly people living the good life on their smallholdings and trading a little in the markets or in the tourist trade.  There does however seem to be a trend back to the countryside, and it is becoming more popular to live a simple life in the country and this is rejuvinating countryside areas a little. 

It attracts a certain kind of person I think, some are artists seeking inspiration from nature, some just want a more relaxed lifestyle and a good place to raise their children away from the cities.  The nature of work is very different obviously, and it is good to see the rural entrepreneurs, crafts, delicious foods and products that are being made.

The organic movement, especially farmhouse type foods and local specialities unique to an area can make an area famous especially when the locale is combined with an opportunity for some appreciation of nature.   Although it’s hard to see the appreciation of nature in the city, you can tell through the marketing of products and the tourists flocking to the countryside to go camping and stay in beautiful places in the countryside that this is the case.  

There are even small clusters of counter culture springing up on the coast where you can sometimes find surfing hippies, living in caravans and make shift houses with solar panels and windmills, making jewellery, listening to dub music and selling stuff they picked up in Bali or Thailand.

Living and working in the countryside has always appealed to me, probably because I grew up myself in the countryside in Suffolk and Norfolk in the UK, it just seems natural to want to live amongst nature rather than amongst concrete, no matter how spectacular the architecture maybe.  I even considered doing a world tour by way of organic farming in return for board and lodgings once. 

It is good to see that WWOOF (willing workers on organic farms) is well established in Japan and provides an opportunity to do just that.  I recommend it, I’m sure that of all the countries you could do WWOOF in, Japan would be one of those where you could learn the most interesting farming methods and rural crafts and trades.  I found an interesting article about a foreigner living the good life in Japan over at escape artist too.  You never know, I may be heading in his direction for some advice in years to come.       

Next, is your page interesting and informative, well written and easy on the eye?  If it is then people will want to link to your page.  This form of organic linking from web page to web page is the best available as you have to do nothing except write the excellent content and watch the links roll in.  A link to your site is essentially a vote from the internet that your site contains something interesting.  The more votes the higher you rank.  Links, ideally, should be one way (incoming to your site) rather than reciprocal (although reciprocal links are helpful too).  The links to your site should contain within the anchor text, the keywords or keyphrases that you are trying to rank highly for, the “vote” for your site, then shows what it is “voting” for.  The keywords you are trying to rank for should ideally be listed in your html header, and in the body of your text.

How to build links to your site…

Waiting for your “organic” links to grow because of your amazing web content is not exactly a quick or guaranteed process.  You can usually build reciprocal links by contacting other webmasters and exchanging links, this can be difficult as webmasters usually only want to link to sites that are relevant to their pages, and if you are a competitor, it hardly makes sense to help build your competitions web page popularity.  It is time consuming, but reciprocal links are definitely worth it.  Next, you can find web pages that allow you to post a response and a link to your site, those using the “no follow” html should be avoided.  This is a good way to build one way links, but write a decent response, some good content, or your post will be deleted as spam and the effort is futile.  Another great way is to submit articles to online submission services, where webmasters looking for content can post your article on their site in return for a link back to your site.  A good article, if used by enough webmasters, can be a fantastic link boost to your site and have your google rankings boosted in very little time.  http://ezinearticles.com 

Not all “votes” are equal.  A link to your site from a site that ranks highly in google itself, from it’s own popularity, will be better for improving your ranking than an obscure site that is linked to by nobody.  Paid links are frowned upon by Google, who recently downgraded page ranks of websites offering such services, high page rank being their currency, this obviously has hurt their business model, but the buyers of links remain unaffected, controversial area, but if google penalised the buyers of links and downgraded their ranking, you can guarantee the competition would be buying links to your site in order to reduce your ranking. 

There are also services offering 3 way links, if 3 or more websites are in agreement, one unique link in to your webpage can be created for all parties involved, I guess it’s kind of removing the reciprocal link problem, and repeated many times over as the linked service above offers it can really help you rank well.

Finding a good source of information on SEO without paying through the nose is not easy amongst the pile of confusing and misleading information out there, someone I find who seems to review well and offer an honest opinion is Jonathan Leger, I recommend what he has to say on the matter.  

At the moment, I have done nothing to optimise this site in any of the ways described above, whatsoever.  It’s only been up a month and, well, I’ve been busy.  BUT I resolve to start doing so and will let you know the results in terms of increased traffic in the weeks and months to come. 

2.)  What is the Yen carry trade?

With the sub – prime crisis, liquidity problems in global financial markets, U.S. interest rates falling, Bernanke and the Fed dropping money from helicopters in an effort to inflate away the US debt problem, and rogue traders in France making Nick Leeson look like a lightweight, something generally bad could be said to be going on with the global economy.   The general havoc and perceived risk in the turbulent markets have all led to a frightened Mrs. Watanabe, the unwinding of the Yen carry trade and a strengthening of the Japanese Yen.

In an effort to kick start Japan’s post bubble economy; the BOJ has for a long time maintained an interest rate of zero or close to zero percent.  The deflationary period has been a long and prolonged one for post bubble Japan, the post war miracle economy has slumbered along of late, unable to shake itself free from the after effects.  Debt laden companies and a banking system struggling to cope with the sheer size of the write offs have slowly, through banking system reform and a carefully guided path from the red to the black, been able to slowly restructure or readjust to a situation resembling healthy.  Having learnt their lesson the hard way though, even a zero interest rate policy has not encouraged much borrowing, they have grown cautious, and rightly so, of taking on new debt.  Even the general population, in contrast to the credit card, ARM happy masses in the US and UK, have shunned borrowing.  With no wage increases to speak of, even pay cuts in some cases in reaction to the deflationary situation, the average Japanese consumer has refused to borrow in large enough numbers to get the economy moving.

Meanwhile, interest rates in the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand have been comparatively high.  In this situation it makes sense for the average Japanese housewife; who generally holds the purse strings to the family finances, to swap her Yen for Dollars or Pounds and reap the benefits of the international interest rates.  This phenomenon has grown to such proportions that currency traders, noting the effect, have named her “Mrs. Watanabe” and have been trying to second guess her next move for some time.

Receiving 5% on your savings instead of 0% is, of course, only beneficial when the Yen exchange rate remains the same or is weakening relative to the other currencies involved.  Mrs. Watanabe, selling Yen in the currency markets weakens the currency, helping her gain even greater profits when it comes time to convert the trades back to Yen.  The first Mrs. Watanabe out is “quids in”, but the last out has to write off any gains from interest rate differentials against the losses from a strengthening Yen.  It’s not just Mrs. Watanabe who’s being playing this risky game either.  Vast sums have been borrowed in Yen and converted in the forex markets to invest in a variety of different markets in search of a quick profit.  It is not surprising that peaks in carry trading correspond with peaks in the Dow.

As a result, a lot of people have a close eye on the Yen carry trade phenomenon.  A side effect is a beneficial boost for Japan’s numerous export led companies, with the stock prices of Toyota, Honda, Canon, Sony, Nintendo etc. all moving up to reflect the increase in profits expected from a weakening Yen, but the real story is pay back time.

When the Yen carry trade unwinds; which it definitely has done to a large extent already, the last out could face huge losses (in 1998 a Yen carry unwind caused a 30% change in exchange rate against the dollar).  The money to repay lenders of Yen has to come from somewhere.  This situation, in combination with sub prime, general lack of liquidity in the worlds financial markets, the Fed dropping interest rates and increasing the money supply of dollars as it is doing in an effort to inflate away the US foreign owned debt problem spells bad times ahead.  There’s just no incentive to invest in such a risky situation by borrowing (an increasingly strong) Yen anymore, the carry trade, despite interest rates remaining near 0% in Japan is temporarily dead.  Not even Mrs. Watanabe can save us now…

Dazaifu is the nearest Shinto shrine of national significance to my apartment in Fukuoka.  It’s a shrine that people visit to pray for academic success, and so is visited by students from all over Japan, hoping to succeed in whatever academic endeavour they may be pursuing.  Legend has it that a flying plum tree rooted there many years ago following Sugawara Michizane from exile in Kyoto and there are indeed thousands (around 6,000) plum or “ume” trees around the shrine some of which are amazingly old and large, having to be supported in places by man made buttresses.  There are also various Koi ponds and a man with an amazing monkey, more on that later…

For me personally though, I want to be able to understand and be understood on a daily basis which means having some listening and speaking skills, fortunately this is relatively straightforward (compared with writing and reading kanji for example) and this is why I say that Japanese as a language is not as difficult as people make it out to be. There are some great resources for listening and speaking too, or at least they have worked for me (or are presently working for me). I highly recommend Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone . Pimsleur has figured it all out with the memory techniques I think, and although for the three part course you need to shell out a whopping $900 or be a bitlord pirate - (your choice) it is definitely worth it either way. You get 90 quality lessons. Rosetta Stone is a bit more fun and interactive and also a good method of retaining the language and also costs a whopping $300! That’s quite a sting, you can probably get them both for under $1000 somewhere with a bit of web surfing. You get what you pay for I guess. Obviously the best way to learn Japanese is to be in Japan and to require the language for your survival. Japanese language or social deprivation? I’ll learn Japanese! Motivations like that work every time.